Air Force civil engineering team defies challenges during deployment to Kuwait; they helped with war efforts, but their absence affected their home bases in Alaska.

• Author: Pounds, Nancy

Several dozen U.S. Air Force civil engineers from Alaska exchanged Arctic challenges for wartime and desert conditions last year. They also confronted several engineering obstacles during a seven-month deployment at the staging sites for U.S. troops' mission in the war in Iraq.

These airmen were among the first Air Force engineers assigned to the typically Army mission of civil engineering and maintenance.

Fifty-five civil engineers from Eielson and Elmendorf air force bases--plus two others from Hill Air Force Base in Utah--tackled maintenance operations under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army in Kuwait. The group's deployment began in October 2004 and concluded last May.

TRAINING FOR WAR

Their scheduled December deployment was moved up by several months, and the engineering group was given a week's notice before departure for training.

The first stop was Fort Carson Army Post in Colorado Springs, Colo., for intensive combat training. The group, mostly from Eielson near Fairbanks, joined about 240 other civil engineers to practice marksmanship and run through drills like to fire from moving vehicles and to learn combat lifesaver training. The engineers were being trained for work in perilous Baghdad, Iraq, although the Alaskans spent their deployment in the less hazardous Kuwait.

"We were the first Air Force engineers to go through the Army's Power Projection Platform at Fort Carson," said Capt. Chris Smith from Eielson.

Fort Carson's training program is one of the best of its kind, he added. The training is now required for military civil engineering groups, he said.

The engineers were led by Maj. Jeff McBride, Eielson's 354 Civil Engineer Squadron operations chief, and Senior Master Sgt. John O'Brien, range maintenance chief, also from the same squadron. Smith, a lieutenant during the deployment and one of two of the team's officers, served as a supervisor.

CHALLENGING PROJECTS

After training, the team traveled directly to Kuwait, where they handled infrastructure maintenance projects at Camp Arifjan and five other major Army camps in southern Kuwait, Smith said.

Infrastructure maintenance included overseeing water, sewer and electrical systems, as well as repairing broken doors or windows, Smith said.

The engineers tackled similar projects at the Air Force bases in Alaska, but in Kuwait they were confronted with systems of a different quality, noted Jeff Putnam, deputy base civil engineer, Eielson, who was not deployed.

"It really tied...